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A lot of us think managing email is a full-time job. But only John Freeman found the time to write a book about it. Freeman’s The Tyranny of E-Mail is a 250+ page cry for help told through a detailed history of human communication. Freeman takes us through the unsettling acceleration in daily life that came with the introduction of the railroad and the telegraph and concludes that e-mail is stealing years off our lives. Things don’t appear to be slowing down. Had he waited a couple of years to write the book, he could have called it The Tyranny of Texting.

And, Judith Martin, a.k.a Miss Manners, has advice about trying to figure out whether or not to make your message faith-specific: “Please do not go around interrogating random people about their religious affiliations and practices.” More (than you probably want to know) from Miss Manners here.

“Email,” “email,” “e-mail,” or “email?” Believe it or not, there’s consensus on this one.

The AP Stylebook, the go-to guide for print journalists, says it’s “e-mail.” The New York Times agrees. (They have their own style book.) Chicago Manual of Style says “e-mail” too. Even Lynne Truss, the grammar curmudgeon who wrote the best-seller Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, opts for “e-mail” on her blog. Or is it “Blog?”

When you Reply or Forward a message, you’ll be presented with a toolbar button that toggles between two states: Quote and Summarize. Clicking on Quote will format the message with conventional indented quoting. Click on Summarize and Postbox will quote the entire conversation in a simple and easy to read format, as illustrated below:

How to Download

If you’re already a Postbox user, simply install Postbox 2.1 and your current settings will be used, there’s nothing more to setup!

Get a Deal

Postbox 2.1 is a free update for all Postbox 2 users. If you’re using Postbox 1.x and would like be informed of special deals, see our “Deals Tab” on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our Newsletter.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who helped us with testing and feedback during the Postbox 2.1 BETA, we couldn’t do it without you!

One of the most innovative features in Postbox is its Accounts and Folders pane, the UI element that drives your message view. It’s completely unique, and this post will dig into how and why it’s designed differently than other offerings.

Research

When we founded Postbox, we wanted to create a product that simplified the email experience while providing more power and control. We looked at existing folder pane implementations and found two basic approaches:

Thunderbird’s and Microsoft’s Hierarchical Approach

A simple tree hierarchy of accounts and their subfolders.

Pros

conceptually the easiest to understand, similar to file systems

all account data is grouped together

ability to keep all folders open and accessible

Cons

no support for unified inboxes or folders

difficult to jump from inbox to inbox

requires frequent expand/collapse actions for folders and subfolders

expanded folders increases the number of drop targets and folder pane scrolling

Apple’s Unified Folder Design

Apple’s design is optimized for viewing email within unified special folders such as the inbox, drafts and sent.

Pros

unified views for inboxes and special folders

ability to select individual accounts when needed

easy to jump from inbox to inbox

Cons

conceptually harder to understand since account data is broken up by special/functional folders

unified views include all email accounts, which inappropriately mixes work and personal messages together

difficult to navigate from folder to folder when working within a single account

(Note: in Thunderbird 3, Mozilla implemented Apple’s design and made it an optional view.)

A New and Improved Design for Postbox

In Postbox, we wanted to give people the best of both worlds, which included unified folders and the ability to keep work and personal messages separate. The design also needed to be quick and easy to setup, organize and maintain.

To address these challenges, we split Accounts from Folders and positioned them within their own dedicated panes. The Accounts pane is where you set context, for example, by selecting “work” vs. “personal” accounts.

When an account is selected, only the folders that belong to that account will display, and folders from non-selected accounts will be hidden from view. This dramatically simplifies the Folder Pane, minimizes the number of drop targets, reduces folder pane scrolling, and keeps unrelated contexts (e.g., work and personal) from inappropriately mixing.

To support Unified Views, all accounts are initially positioned within an “All Accounts” group. Selecting this group provides a unified view of all messages across all accounts in the selected folder. Additionally, special folders such as the inbox, sent, drafts and trash are also unified.

Most importantly, custom unified views can be created by organizing accounts into Account Groups. For example, you can create groups for your “work” and “personal” accounts, and then unify your message views by those groups.

With the basic design in place, we arrived at two decision points. The first was whether to display sub-folders within special folders, as illustrated below:

We solicited advice from Postbox users through several rounds of surveys, and from 986 responses, 56% selected the simpler option on the left.

Next, we needed to determine whether storage folders should be located at the root folder level, or positioned within parent folders named after the accounts:

In this case, survey data indicated that Postbox users preferred the nested approach.

To wrap up, the design of Postbox’s Accounts and Folders Pane offers these unique benefits and tradeoffs:

Pros

ability to create groups of unified accounts/folder views to keep work and personal messages separate

quick to jump from group to group, account to account, and inbox to inbox

ability to keep folders within a group open and accessible

unrelated folders are kept out of view, which simplifies folder pane viewing and handling

clean, simple, flexible, and powerful

Cons

small learning curve associated with using two selectors instead of one

when a single account is selected, moving messages to another account requires a drag-hover-drop action as opposed to drag-drop

To-Do Tracking Postbox provides a simple and lightweight way to use email messages to track To-Dos. Easily tag messages as To-Do, create new To-Dos, and combine them into a dedicated To-Do View.

Find by ContactClick on any contact to find recent messages, files or images they’ve sent to you — a time saver of epic proportions!

Compact Header Mode Have a Netbook or small MacBook? Postbox’s Compact Headers make the most of your available screen space.

Quick Reply Quick Reply to a message without opening a separate compose window. It all happens inline within a message or conversation, so you can get right back to what you were doing.

Quick Move + Quick Folder Switch File messages without using your mouse using Quick Move. Just type the letter “V”, enter the first few letters from the target folder, and voila! Type “G” to switch to a folder just as quickly.

Message Inspector Postbox looks for interesting content within each message, then highlights what it finds in the Message Inspector. It’s like a smart discovery engine for email.

Message AnnotationUse the Edit function to change the message subject, edit its content, or annotate messages as easily as using a word processor. No more emailing notes to yourself!

More Keyboard Shortcuts Navigate to any corner of the app, or initiate most any function, with a simple keystroke. Power users rejoice!

Better Mac SupportPostbox tightly integrates with the Mac, and provides support for Address Book, iCal, iPhoto, Spotlight, Quick Look, and productivity applications such as OmniFocus, Things, and Alfred.

Over the next few posts we’ll explore these features in more detail, and we’ll also shed some light on how and why they were developed. Stay tuned!

Postbox is built by a group of talented designers and developers from around the Web. A hearty note of “Thanks!” to following individuals for their contributions to Postbox 2!

Bryan Bell, Graphic DesignBryan Bell helped develop the look and feel of the Postbox user interface, including in-product icons and graphics. Bryan has been an Internet-oriented designer for the past 10 years, and designs simple, crisp, and attractive websites, icons, and user-interfaces for several other products and clients.

Mike Rohde, Icon DesignMike Rohde designed the original Postbox application icon, and for Postbox 2, updated the icon with a brighter, more modern look. Mike’s focus is on logo & identity design, application icon design and sketchnote illustrations, working with clients around the world. Mike illustrated the 37signals book REWORK, and was official sketchnoter at SXSW Interactive, SEED 3 and An Event Apart.

Kenichi Yoshida, Icon DesignKenichi Yoshida is a digital artist and designer that specializes in user interface icons, and Kenichi designed the icons for the Windows version of Postbox 2. Kenichi has been creating icons for Mac + Windows developers since 2005, and is always looking for interesting and unique projects.

Luke Dorny, Web DesignLuke was the ringmaster behind the Postbox 2 website redesign, and is one of the principles at Butter Label, a Pixels, Packaging, and Print design firm. They’re not on a mission, but rather, contractable and all wrapped up in design.

Tim Van Damme, Web DesignTim Van Damme is a 24-year old interface designer, based and raised in Belgium, who helped give the Postbox 2 website it’s distinctive look and feel. He designs interfaces as a freelancer at Made by Elephant, and loves everything involving on- and offline design. He’s also a wanna-be writer at Maxvoltar.

Noah Stokes, Web DeveloperNoah Stokes is one heck of a Web Developer that transformed the Postbox 2 web design into working reality. He has one of the most unique resumes in the business, and in a nutshell, he can and will do anything if you pay more than In-N-Out.

Brian Artka, Web DeveloperBrian’s specialty, and passion, is the front-end development of the Web. Armed with a great sense of design and a precise attention to details, Brian can turn almost any design mock-up into a full fledged website. Brian provides these services as Founder and CEO of size43 LLC, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Today, we’re excited to announce our newest release, Postbox 2. We built Postbox to make you better at what you do, by providing for the various ways you use email, and making those behaviors work really well.

Postbox 2 will help you get more done, more quickly, with less effort. With faster performance, a streamlined interface, and a bevy of productivity-boosting features, Postbox 2 will make life a little easier!

Unify your Inboxes using Account Groups

Postbox now supports Unified Inboxes, which lets you combine messages from multiple accounts into one Inbox. Accounts can also be organized into Account Groups, so you can keep your work and personal messages separate, but unify the views within each group.

Make sense of long email threads with Conversation Views

Postbox Conversation Views are now even more powerful, actionable, and easy to read. Postbox gathers conversation fragments from multiple folders and presents them within a unified view. Quickly bring yourself up to speed and jump into discussions with more information, context, and insight.

Get Stuff Done using the new To-Do View

A new To-Do View lets you work on important tasks without distraction.

Combine the To-Do View with Unified Inboxes/Folders and the Focus Pane to crunch through To-Dos in record time.

Quick Reply

Quick Reply lets you reply to a message without the need to open a separate compose window, which is perfect for short, snappy responses such as “I’ll see you at eight,” or simply “thanks!” And it all happens inline within a message or conversation, so that you can get right back to what you were doing.

Quick Move

With Quick Move, you can file messages without using your mouse. Just type the letter “v”, enter the first few letters from the target folder, and the message will file to your auto-completed selection. The Quick Move panel defaults to the last used folder for even faster filing.

As mentioned in our last post, we believe there are a number of factors that cause people to feel overloaded by email. Here’s a breakdown of the major ones we’ve identified, and how we’re addressing these challenges in the upcoming Postbox 2 release.

Excessive Multi-tasking

Our inboxes mirror the many projects, events, and clients we juggle each day: “SXSW Conference,” “website redesign,” or “payroll.” As we step through our inboxes, we evaluate messages relative to these larger contexts. A mixed inbox forces us to reconstruct these contexts more often than necessary, which consumes time and energy.

If work productivity is the goal, our first step is to remove personal messages from view. While most Unified Inbox implementations combine messages from every account, Postbox 2 will let you organize work accounts into a single unified view, while keeping personal accounts separate.

Now that we’ve isolated work emails, the new Focus Pane will enable you to group and view emails by Topic, such as “website redesign.” This lets you focus on one priority at a time, and to complete all that’s needed within that priority, before moving on to the next one. And since work priorities are dynamic, you will be able to easily add, remove, or reorder your Topics as needed.

Missing Context

Messages can be scattered across the inbox, sent folder, and storage folders, making it difficult to come up to speed on long email threads. So people often leave messages within the inbox, in addition to :cc’ing themselves, to keep relevant information accessible. This adds clutter to the inbox and contributes to overload.

Postbox gathers conversation fragments from multiple folders and combines them into a chronological, unified view. Only one message is needed to reconstruct an entire conversation. These views will enable you jump into the discussion with more information, context and insight while keeping your inbox tidy.

Frequent Interruptions/Distractions

Another productivity killer comes from interruptions from new messages, instant messages, text messages, tweets, etc. Some designers believe that a Universal Inbox which combines all of these communication channels will enhance productivity. We couldn’t disagree more, because with this approach you’re simply increasing the surface area for distraction.

The Postbox 2 Focus Pane ensures you will only see new messages that relate to the priority you’re currently working on. All other new messages reside elsewhere in the Inbox. A new message counter displays next to your Favorite Topics, so that you can be aware of incoming mail but not distracted by it.

We’ve even implemented a way post to Facebook and Twitter directly from within the Postbox interface, so you can update your status without getting distracted by the content on those websites.

Inbox as Universal Dumping Ground

Let’s face it, filing messages is painful and tedious, and folder hierarchies take a lot of time and effort to maintain. That’s why many people leave everything in the inbox, which further clutters up their view. Postbox 2 will help to clear out your inbox in several ways.

First is a fast and powerful search engine. If you know that you can find something easily, you’re more likely to move it out of the inbox.

Second is a one-click Archive function, similar to Gmail’s archive feature. This helps move inactive messages from the inbox, without the decision making hassle of choosing a specific folder. Combine the use of Archive with Postbox search and you have a winning combination - easy to file, easy to find.

For those who have invested heavily in their folder hierarchies, Postbox 2 introduces Quick Move, which lets you move messages by simply typing the name of the target folder. You can then use the new Quick Switch feature to jump immediately to that location.

Mixed Use Cases

The inbox is where we communicate, but it is also where we store files and information, keep track of things to do, and everything in-between. So we built Postbox to provide for the different ways you use email, and making those behaviors work really, really well.

If a message is kept within the inbox because it represents something you need to do, then you can tag it as a To-Do. This changes its background color in the list view to make it easier to find. You can also pin your To-Dos to the top of the message list, so important emails do not get pushed out of sight (and out of mind) by new messages. Finally, you can use the new To-Do View to only focus on those messages that require action.

We also keep messages around to act as reminders, usually when you’re waiting on a response from someone else. When you mark a message as pending, the message row will turn light gray to indicate that no further action is required, which helps you more efficiently scan your inbox and ignore items that do not require immediate attention. When a new reply arrives, the Pending flag is automatically removed and the message status is switched to “Unread.”

High Message Volumes

Too often we equate overload with volume. But our take is that volume simply amplifies the issues outlined above. By addressing many of the other root causes of overload, volume begins to become less of an issue.

Wrap-up

Of course there’s much more to this subject than can be covered in one post, but we hope this provides a little more insight into how we view the problem, in addition to what’s new and cool about the upcoming Postbox 2 release.

There’s lots of talk about email overload these days. The release of Gmail’s Priority Inbox has brought new attention to the issue, but people have been discussing the problem for years in academia, press, blogs, etc.

Additionally, there are behavioral approaches advocated by bloggers and productivity gurus alike. We can declare email bankruptcy and just start over, which would probably cause 98% of us to lose our jobs. We can try to get to Inbox Zero, but like Tetris, the emails just keep coming. Some advise turning email off completely, while others advocate messages with only three.sentenc.es... again, the list goes on.

So with all of this attention on email overload, why do we still feel overloaded?

Our take is that there is no single cause to email overload, and thus, no silver bullet to be found. We believe that email overload, or more accurately, the “feelings of being overloaded,” are due to many different factors stacked one upon another.

There’s another side to this story that we believe gets overlooked: productivity. Since the inbox is the nexus of work activity, a common pitfall is to equate inbox productivity with work productivity. Emptying your inbox may feel satisfying, but at the end of the day, did it move the needle at work? To properly address overload we must also enhance productivity, in the same way we would combine losing weight with better nutrition, sleep and exercise.

In the upcoming Postbox 2 release, we’re systematically addressing some of the key contributors to overload, while helping people become more efficient and productive. We’ll discuss the details in the next post.

This beta brings a ton of new features and improvements that will help you get more done, more quickly, with a lot less effort.

Get Organized the Easy Way

Postbox 2 gives you the tools you need to organize your Inbox (and workload) into smaller, more manageable chunks. We don’t pay lip service to inbox overload, we crush it!

Postbox 2 supports Unified Inboxes/Folders - our most requested feature. But we didn’t stop there, because you can also organize your accounts into Groups. This feature allows you to keep “work” and “personal” accounts separate, with unified views for each group.

Postbox 2 introduces the Focus Pane, a new column view that lets you work with messages by attribute, topics, contacts or dates. Use the Focus Pane to increase your concentration and productivity within areas high on your priority list.

A new To-Do View lets you work on important tasks without distraction. Combine the To-Do View with Unified Inboxes/Folders and the Focus Pane to crunch through To-Dos in record time.

Postbox Conversation Views are now even more powerful, actionable, and easy to read. Quickly bring yourself up to speed and jump into discussions with more information, context, and insight.

Work Faster

Rip through large message loads at blazing speeds with a slew of new features that will make your inbox cry “uncle!”

Quick Reply lets you reply to a message without the need to open a separate compose window, which is perfect for short, snappy responses such as “I’ll see you at eight,” or “buy low, sell high.” And it all happens inline within a message or conversation.

File messages without using your mouse using Quick Move. Just type the letter “V”, enter the first few letters from the target folder, and voila!

Now you can switch to a different folder using only your keyboard. Type “G” and the Quick Switch panel will enable you to jump to any folder in a flash.

You asked for more Keyboard Shortcuts, we’ve got ‘em in Postbox 2. Navigate to any corner of the app, or initiate most any function with a simple keystroke. Power users rejoice!

Much More…

We’ve made improvements within almost every corner of Postbox, including better performance, better support for Signatures, a new streamlined interface, and a bevy of new features that will make you ultra-productive. Much more than an email client, Postbox 2 helps you tackle your most demanding workloads!

Getting Started

Then, simply install Postbox 2. If you’re currently using Postbox 1.1.x, your configuration files will be imported automatically, however, some of the performance improvements in Postbox 2 will require that you re-index your messages. For more details, please see the Postbox 2 Release Notes.

Feedback

We would very much appreciate your thoughts on this release, and have set up a special Postbox 2 Beta Forum on our support site to gather feedback. If you have ideas that you would like to see incorporated into Postbox, please visit our Ideas and Feature Requests Forum and be sure to vote on or recommend features that you’re interested in.

Thanks again for your continued interest in Postbox, and please be sure to tell your co-workers, friends and family about Postbox 2.

Thanks to everyone for making the Postbox Express launch a huge success! Postbox Express is a powerful new alternative to Thunderbird and other desktop email clients that’s simple, easy to use, and completely free. And today, we’re pleased to announce that Postbox Express 1.0.1 now supports Add-Ons! Here’s what’s new:

Add-Ons - Postbox Express 1.0.1 now works with Add-Ons, including the popular Lightning Calendaring Add-On. Visit our Add-Ons page to try some of the Add-Ons available for Postbox and Postbox Express.

Language Packs - You can now install community-translated Language Packs into Postbox Express, including German, French, Spanish (Spain), English (British), Italian, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, and Swedish, with more on the way! Help us localize Postbox Express by visiting our Translations page.

First, the Postbox Refer-a-Friend Promotion will be ending July 31st, at 11:59PM EST. So save $10 on Postbox today, then earn $5 each time someone purchases with your coupon code until the end of the month! Refer six friends and Postbox is effectively FREE!

Second, the Lifetime Upgrades Option will also be ending on July 31st, at 11:59PM EST. Until then, we’re sweetening the deal by reducing the price to just $24.95$19.95!

Combine these deals together to save $15 on Postbox! But hurry, July will be over before you know it!